Instapundit is posting on bedbugs, which are now a plague thanks to the geniuses who banned DDT in the 1970s,
LOOKING FOR new weapons to kill bedbugs. “A common household pest for centuries, bedbugs were virtually eradicated in the 1940s and ’50s by the widespread use of DDT. That insecticide was banned in the 1970s, and the bugs developed resistance to chemicals that replaced it. . . . Getting rid of them, experts say, has become a complex political and social problem, not only because of modern concerns about pesticide use but also because of Americans’ mobile lifestyle.”
It’s not just the Americans who are mobile. The whole world travels (legally and illegally).
It turns out there’s a bedbug registry, where you can find at least a partial answer to the question, does your hotel have bedbugs? Or at least, which hotels have had them.
I wonder if there’s a bedbug registry for movie theaters, too.
{{shudder}}
